Why don’t we play “find the odd one out”? The setbacks of Prince Harry and Meghan Clarke, the loves of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez and the crisis in Zambia. The answer, alas, is obvious. In 2021, the international press devoted only 512 articles to Zambia, where one of the greatest humanitarian dramas on the planet is being played out in silence, reveals a report by the NGO Care. Nearly one million people on the brink of starvation and 60% of the population below the poverty line. Zambia, victim of repeated droughts, is also bearing the brunt of climate change.
512 articles for the humanitarian crisis in Zambia against 239,000 devoted to the space race between Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson or 3.5 million on the Tokyo Olympics. For Philippe Lévêque, president of Care France, these blind spots in the news have serious consequences: “When a subject is widely publicized, it then makes it possible to mobilize negotiators or international donors who are themselves approached by parliaments, by voters. There is a chain that will be created and which will allow to provide more aid or to try to advance in the resolution of conflicts.” The sad list drawn up for five years by the NGO highlights these forgotten crises, from the Central African Republic to Honduras via Guatemala, while one inhabitant of the Earth in 28 cannot survive without humanitarian aid.
1Zambia: 512 articles published*
In this poor country weighed down by a colossal debt, despite its wealth in copper, 1.2 million people suffer from hunger and 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. Zambia last year became the first country in Africa to default on its debt. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced in December 2021 an agreement in principle for an aid program, with a credit of 1.4 billion dollars over three years. A hope for the new Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema, to see his country lift its head above water.
2Ukraine: 801 articles published
It is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and if it reappeared in spite of itself at the end of the year in the news, it is because it is at the center of major diplomatic maneuvers between Russia and United States. Since Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, the war against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country has never stopped. The conflict left more than 13,000 dead and around 1.5 million displaced. 3.4 million people need humanitarian aid, for a country of 40 million inhabitants.
3Malawi: 832 articles published
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, only 11% of the population is connected to electricity. 17% of the population suffers from malnutrition. 40,000 people are displaced each year due to the climate crisis. The Covid has considerably weakened small businesses and further aggravated misery.
4Central African Republic: 1,459 articles published
2.8 million people need humanitarian aid. One in three children is forced to work to survive. The Central African Republic, the second least developed country in the world, according to the UN, has been the scene of a civil war since 2013. The army has largely reconquered the territory, thanks to the support of hundreds of Russian paramilitaries, mercenaries from the private Russian security company Wagner. Clashes remain regular between rebels and government forces, particularly in the northwest of the country.
5Guatemala: 1,644 articles published
40% live in extreme poverty. Guatemala is one of the ten countries most vulnerable to climate change in the world. Disasters linked to global warming are accelerating migration. In October and November 2020, two powerful hurricanes, Eta and Iota, successively hit the country, devastating agricultural land, and pushing the Guatemalans to flee poverty and violence towards the north of the country and Mexico, from where they try to reach the United States.
6Colombia: 2,136 articles published
1.8 million Venezuelan refugees live in the country. 6.7 million people need humanitarian aid. In 2016, a peace accord ended nearly six decades of guerrilla warfare by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Large swaths of territory have since been taken over by other armed groups, FARC dissidents or drug traffickers, taking advantage of the absence and inaction of the state in these areas. And the political and agrarian reforms provided for in the peace agreement are still pending.
7Burundi: 2,265 articles published
2.3 million people need humanitarian aid. This East African country has been experiencing a deep political crisis since 2015 which has left 1,200 dead and forced some 400,000 Burundians into exile. Floods and natural disasters further accentuate the crisis and cause population displacements, particularly in the Lake Tanganyika region and as far as Bujumbura, the capital, where the rising waters have been worsening for ten years. Lhe United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has noted a situation of famine.
8Niger: 2,774 articles published
46% of children under 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition. The country suffers from significant rainfall deficits and insecurity disrupts harvests and trade and causes movements of population. The so-called “three borders” area on the borders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the scene for several years of bloody actions carried out in particular by armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), is particularly affected.
9Zimbabwe: 2,803 articles published
5.7 million people do not have enough food. 6.8 million need some form of humanitarian aid. The country is ravaged by inflation and despite a debt of 9.3 billion euros, including nearly six billion in arrears, it has not received aid from the IMF or the World Bank for several years. President Robert Mugabe, overthrown in 2017 after nearly forty years in power, left behind a battered economy plagued by unemployment, lack of cash, gasoline and even electricity and water.
10Honduras: 3,920 articles published
2.8 million people need humanitarian aid. Nearly 60% of the 10 million inhabitants of Honduras live below the poverty line. The country, one of the most violent in Central America, is undermined to the highest levels of the state by drug trafficking and Hondurans flee unemployment and the violence of the “maras”, the criminal gangs that terrorize and hold the population to ransom. More than a dozen caravans of thousands of migrants have left Honduras since October 2018 with the hope of reaching the United States.
* Count made by the NGO Care International (link to a PDF document in English), which analyzed and counted the online articles published between January and the end of September in Arabic, English, German, French and Spanish for humanitarian crises related to conflicts or climate change affecting more than one million people.